Richard Meier [...] once declared that “white is the most wonderful color of all, because within it one can find every color of the rainbow.”
"We think of white marble figures as aesthetic monuments ... frozen in a museum installation."
Most scholars haven't paid much attention to the light traces of pigment that remained on the surface of marble statues, but a flood of recent exhibitions has set out to put their color back.
Listen to Helen of Troy, in the Euripides play that bears her name:

My life and fortunes are a monstrosity,
Partly because of Hera, partly because of my beauty.
If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect
The way you would wipe color off a statue.

It is a wonder how it took us as long as it did to realize the colorful truth behind some of Man's oldest artistic relics. [previously] [via]
posted by Joe in Australia on Aug 21, 2010 - 41 comments

"...it looks like the dad's selling the tickets, the boy's complaining about something, and the mom and girl are extremely disinterested." If you liked Ted Bates, you'll love the Portland Sea Dogs. Quoth King Kaufman: "The hilarious part of the controversy is the statue itself, which is funnier than Spinal Tap's Stonehenge. It's that bad."
posted by staggernation on Apr 10, 2007 - 54 comments

If you work at Langley and you need a break from actual intelligence gathering, you can always try to crack the code to the sculpture right outside the cafeteria window. Kryptos is a sculpture by James Sanborn located on the CIA grounds which contains a four-part coded message: sections 1-3 have been solved (with Sanborn admitting he made a typo in section 2). Perhaps you'd like to join Elonka (and the hive mind) in having a go at section 4.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 3, 2006 - 14 comments

Happy Birthday David! Today is the 500th anniversary of the statue's unveiling.
posted by azul on Sep 8, 2004 - 13 comments

Gee, stupid me. I thought it was a pretty good statue, myself. Seems someone with a laser beam and time on his hands has worked out that the statue of David squints. Wow. Thanks a lot, mister! I can rest a lot easier knowing that. Why, I might have been misled into believing it was some kind of masterpiece or something. What, he couldn't find anything more useless to do with his sabbatical?
posted by Ezrael on Jun 9, 2000 - 11 comments